Defiant Tony Blair declared today that he was right to take actionto stop Saddam Hussein, even though his supposed weapons of massdestruction turned out not to exist.

In his long-awaited appearance beyond the Iraq Inquiry, theformer prime minister made clear that it was always his intention tojoin the Americans if it came to war with Iraq.

He said that in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the TwinTowers in New York, he firmly believed that he could not run the riskthat Saddam would reconstitute his banned weapons programmes.

"The decision I took - and frankly would take again - was ifthere was any possibility that he could develop weapons of massdestruction (WMD) we should stop him," he said.

"That was my view then and that is my view now."

Mr Blair insisted that there had been no "covert" deal withGeorge Bush to go to war when they met at the president's Texas ranchin Crawford in April 2002 - 11 months before the invasion.

He said he had always been open that Saddam had to be confronted over his WMD programme.

"The one thing I was not doing was dissembling in that position.How we proceed in this is a matter that was open. The position was nota covert position, it was an open position," he said.

"We would be with them in dealing with this threat and how wedid that was an open question, and even at that stage I was raising theissue of going to the UN."

But pressed on what he thought Mr Bush took from the meeting,he went further, saying: "I think what he took from that was exactlywhat he should have taken, which was if it came to military actionbecause there was no way of dealing with this diplomatically, we wouldbe with him.

Mr Blair defended his assertion in the Government's controversial Iraqdossier, published in September 2002, that the intelligence hadestablished "beyond doubt" that Saddam had WMD.

"What I said in the foreword was that I believed it was beyonddoubt. I did believe it and I did believe it was beyond doubt," hesaid.

He said he had been convinced by reports he was receiving from the Joint Intelligence Committee that Saddam retained WMD.

"It was hard to come to any other conclusion than that this person is continuing WMD programmes," he said.

He accepted it had been a mistake not to make clear that thenow-notorious claim that some WMD could be launched within 45 minutesreferred to battlefield weapons and not long-range missiles.

"I would have been better to have corrected it in the light of the significance it later took on," he said.

Mr Blair insisted that he had not deceived the nation over the grounds for going to war with Iraq.

He told the inquiry he had made the judgment that Britain should not "run the risk" of allowing Saddam to remain in power.

He said: "This isn't about a lie or a conspiracy or a deceit or a deception.

"It's a decision. And the decision I had to take was, givenSaddam's history, given his use of chemical weapons, given the over onemillion people whose deaths he had caused, given 10 years of breakingUN resolutions, could we take the risk of this man reconstituting hisweapons programmes or is that a risk that it would be irresponsible totake?"

He went on: "I had to take the decision. I believed, and in theend the Cabinet believed - so did Parliament incidentally - that wewere right not to run that risk.